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So to summarize: he resuggested "WikiProject Intellectual Diversity", a group with the goal to make "Wikipedia more intellectually diverse" and "ensure fair an

So to summarize: he resuggested "WikiProject Intellectual Diversity", a group with the goal to make "Wikipedia more intellectually diverse" and "ensure fair and open decision-making and governance, broaden the range of permissible sources, reinforce genuine neutrality, rein in over-aggressive blocking while holding the powerful to higher standards of accountability", etc, with the implied undertone of preventing Wikipedia from drifting too far to the political left. This is unpopular because people oppose this on various grounds (mostly that it might be vote brigading and tiling decisions in their favor just by showing up in an organised way around wikipedia). Also the same project was apparently suggested before and rejected in early stages But then he made a tweet that basically just says "I suggested this, some people like it, some hate it". That's super against the rules, because it attracts people to the proposal who otherwise wouldn't have seen it. Probably in an attempt to sway discussion, because his tweets are obviously seen primarily by people who like his ideas Which then lead to the vote to ban him from editing Wikipedia. With a total ban getting more votes than a more limited ban, like banning him from participating in articles namespaced for internal matters Is that about right?

draw_down 4mo ago
[dead]
Sweepi 4mo ago
Well there is a lot more, e.g.: After that, Larry Sanger remarked: "What people don't realize, actually, is the number of people who are actually at work on Wikipedia on any given day is not really that enormous. It's more in the hundreds or low thousands, not in the millions. Well, there's a lot of people in India. There's a lot of educated people in India, right? There's a lot more educated people in India than there are in, say, England. Just due to sheer numbers, you can field a lot of good writers on Wikipedia, and if you quite simply learn how to play the game..." (33:54). https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents/Possible_off-wiki_canvassing_by_User:Larry_Sanger&oldid=1360671935#CNN-News18_podcast_interview https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Adminis...
- wongarsu 4mo ago
  Ok, saying things like "The left marched through this institution. There’s no reason we can’t march right back" is pretty bad. To be clear: it would be equally bad if you swapped left and right in that sentence. I don't know if his assessment of the issues with Wikipedia is correct, but his solutions aren't what you propose if you want to make Wikipedia more neutral
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - throwawaypath 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - vrganj 4mo ago
      > Why is that bad? Because it's a far-right conspiracy theory implying Wikipedia editors are Red Guards purging universities, and calls for a counter-purge. In other words, it is a thinly veiled call for violence based on a conspiracy theory. The same conspiracy theory Anders Breivik explicitly cited after murdering 77 people.
      - throwawaypath 4mo ago
        [flagged]
      - throwawaypath 4mo ago
        [flagged]
        vrganj 4mo ago
        It's a rephrasing of the "Cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory, which was at the core of Breivik's Manifesto. A conspiracy theory that originated as "Cultural Bolshevism", the justification the actual Nazis used to justify their mass murder.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
chollida1 4mo ago
> But then he made a tweet that basically just says "I suggested this, some people like it, some hate it". That's super against the rules, because it attracts people to the proposal who otherwise wouldn't have seen it. How would this in any way be against the rules? Wouldn'tan open and democratic process like wikipedia want as many eyes as possible on a vote or rule change? That sounds completely backwards from the open and free spirit of wikipedia. If even wikipedia has gone full mob rule then hwo do any projects stay open and free to everyone?
- ameliaquining 4mo ago
  Consensus-based decision making doesn't work if people can bring in their existing audience from elsewhere to overwhelm the discussion. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Canvassing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Canvassing.
- WarmWash 4mo ago
  While I agree, the internet has also long suffered from brigading (for better or worse) because the barrier-to-action is virtually zero.
- stonogo 4mo ago
  I would describe Wikipedia's process as democratic but not necessarily open. And it's pretty hypocritical to describe how they operate as 'mob rule' while complaining that rabble-rousing on other platforms should be allowed. Which is it? Should Sanger be allowed to raise a mob to win a policy vote, or should Wikipedia forbid external vote-whipping? I stopped engaging with Wikipedia because my experience of their administration is that it's deeply toxic. This specific instance doesn't seem too out-of-hand to me, since the rules are clear in this instance. It's where there are grey areas that their behavior starts to get unhinged.
- john_strinlai 4mo ago
  >How would this in any way be against the rules? Wouldn'tan open and democratic process like wikipedia want as many eyes as possible on a vote or rule change? if you bring in a bunch of non-wikipedia people (i.e. people who haven't previously cared about or participated in wikipedia discussions at all), all from 1 person's twitter following, you aren't getting "open and free spirit"-ed discussion. you are getting a bunch of larry followers who want larry to "win"
afh1 4mo ago
Yes, banned by the status quo for trying to disturb it. Wikipedia is nowadays highly politicized and more time and energy are spent on politics than on actually contributing with any useful knowledge. I've stopped contributing years ago after a decade of writing because of how bad things had gotten. It's a lost battle, all that remains is scorched earth filled with toxic editors trying to push their POV and banning everyone who exposes them or attempts to change things.
- martinald 4mo ago
  Yes agreed, for example, there was an interesting table on the starlink page I used to check every so often showing which countries had access to starlink as it was rolled out. Was interesting to see the expansion. Of course, some editor decided it was 'marketing' for starlink so it got deleted despite loads of people protesting. It was the only source I could find easily for showing which country got starlink when. A huge list of prose is still on the page (not marketing?) showing the updates in a very hard to read and not comprehensive way. Something is really quite wrong over there.
  - ieie3366 4mo ago
    It’s a shame :( There’s a lot of blatantly incorrect information on wikipedia, and i’ve had multiple wikipedia edits reverted due to ’bad sources’
  - ieie3366 4mo ago
    And the worst is the cycle: 1. There is incorrect information on wikipedia. 2. Legacy news publishes an article, using wikipedia as source (of course). 3. Now the incorrect information is essentially canonized
    - JdeBP 4mo ago
      On the other hand, some of the best is when a hoax written by a monk in the north of England some time around 1300 is debunked by late 20th century scholarship, and eventually someone makes Wikipedia no longer re-hash a propagandist revision of the Battle of Stirling Bridge re-set in Wales that stood unchallenged for almost 7 centuries. * https://youtube.com/v/mLdB5s7-h0w https://youtube.com/v/mLdB5s7-h0w * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Battle_of_Orewin_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...
wongarsu 4mo ago
An interesting procedural detail is how an admin decided to just close the discussion and ban the user before the mandatory discussion period was over, and got a lot of pushback for the sloppy decision making process. This was overturned, only for another admin to reach the same conclusion seven hours later, after the discussion was online for the mandatory 72 hours (with no consideration for the two hours between the wrongful decision and the reversal) https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents/Possible_off-wiki_canvassing_by_User:Larry_Sanger&oldid=1360671935#Update https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Adminis...
- Aurornis 4mo ago
  Having a labyrinth of rules to follow and then applying them asymmetrically is a classic way to build power for the ingroup and exile outsiders. The ingroup knows the rules well enough that they can wait until an enemy crosses one of the rules, then they have an excuse to punish them. The more rules on the books, the more opportunities to use them against your enemies. When someone inside breaks the rules, it’s treated as a misstep, handled internally, and then forgiven after a short ceremony to make it look like order and procedure are still being maintained.
  - moralestapia 4mo ago
    This. At clubs. At school. At work. This is one of the first things I taught my kids to recognize and yet I see plenty of people in their 40s or more that still haven't figured it out. Some of them even become "useful fools" and make matters worse.
  - greyface- 4mo ago
    Wikipedians refer to such ingroup members as The Unblockables. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unblockables https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unblockables
  - sixothree 4mo ago
    You can build your own wikipedia.
pjc50 4mo ago
[flagged]
- tpm 4mo ago
  And once they get powerful enough, both diversity and intellect suffer.
- throwawaypath 4mo ago
  [flagged]
- classified 4mo ago
  > that hit a nerve Speaking the unvarnished truth often does.
  - ben_w 4mo ago
    While this can be the case, in my experience nerves are always attached to self-image. This means one can hit a nerve not only by saying the emperor has no clothes, but also with actual defamation.
- archagon 4mo ago
  Much like “free speech.” Do people really not understand how propaganda works? Or do they just pretend not to in order to help enact these otherwise unpalatable policies?
  - throwawaypath 4mo ago
    [flagged]
tialaramex 4mo ago
"Intellectual Diversity" seems to be another of these "Intelligent Design" rebrandings where rather than admit they were wrong the same crap just gets re-branded and goes straight back on the shelf.
FireBeyond 4mo ago
> This is unpopular because people oppose this on various grounds (mostly that it might be vote brigading and tiling decisions in their favor just by showing up in an organised way around wikipedia). Also the same project was apparently suggested before and rejected in early stages It's gone now, but this is hilariously on-brand - Wikipedia Review had its own axes to grind but did hugely in-depth work exposing Wikipedia Admins for "caballing", having secret mailing lists that Wikipedia denied the existence of, private IRC channels where admins had their pet topics that they owned and would "get suppressing fire" from other admins when they were going to make edits that reflected their POV (i.e. "watch while I edit and block/ban people who try to revert or interfere"). They'd do the same for admin elections etc.
Kim_Bruning 4mo ago
Well, sure, it looks like one thing, but ... I took a quick look at what the "Wikiproject intellectual diversity" was actually monitoring. Specific articles or categories about things Mr Sanger finds interesting,right? Well, indeed: specifically it's all arbcom, admin elections, policy pages. You can check it out here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Larry_Sanger/WikiProject_Intellectual_Diversity/PolicyScanner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Larry_Sanger/WikiProject_... Then he canvassed people from outside wikipedia to help with that project. So he claimed to be doing one thing, but in reality it was more of a thinly disguised power play by the look of it.
- MichaelZuo 4mo ago
  This doesnt make sense… ? Clearly all significant names involved with Wikipedia, including admins, have some kind of ulterior motives, to some degree above literally zero. Unless you believe in literally perfect altruism 100% of the time. The degree can vary from one to another, but that seems like a much higher bar to confidently pin down.
  - ImPostingOnHN 4mo ago
    You aren't allowed to build a live feed of wikipedia administrative actions that run counter to your political biases, so that you can coordinate a brigade of people who share your political biases.
    - MichaelZuo 4mo ago
      Did you reply to the correct comment? This doesnt seem to address my comment?
      - ImPostingOnHN 4mo ago
        Can you clarify how your comment addressed the one it replied to? Yours was a bit non-sequitur, so perhaps I misinterpreted the implication.
watwut 4mo ago
> Intellectual Diversity Until I see a situation where this is used to add leftists or far left to a right wing organization, I will just assume it means quota for minimal number of underqualified right wing hacks.

draw_down 4mo ago

[dead]

Sweepi 4mo ago

Well there is a lot more, e.g.: After that, Larry Sanger remarked: "What people don't realize, actually, is the number of people who are actually at work on Wikipedia on any given day is not really that enormous. It's more in the hundreds or low thousands, not in the millions. Well, there's a lot of people in India. There's a lot of educated people in India, right? There's a lot more educated people in India than there are in, say, England. Just due to sheer numbers, you can field a lot of good writers on Wikipedia, and if you quite simply learn how to play the game..." (33:54). https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents/Possible_off-wiki_canvassing_by_User:Larry_Sanger&oldid=1360671935#CNN-News18_podcast_interview https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Adminis...

wongarsu 4mo ago
Ok, saying things like "The left marched through this institution. There’s no reason we can’t march right back" is pretty bad. To be clear: it would be equally bad if you swapped left and right in that sentence. I don't know if his assessment of the issues with Wikipedia is correct, but his solutions aren't what you propose if you want to make Wikipedia more neutral
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- throwawaypath 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - vrganj 4mo ago
    > Why is that bad? Because it's a far-right conspiracy theory implying Wikipedia editors are Red Guards purging universities, and calls for a counter-purge. In other words, it is a thinly veiled call for violence based on a conspiracy theory. The same conspiracy theory Anders Breivik explicitly cited after murdering 77 people.
    - throwawaypath 4mo ago
      [flagged]
    - throwawaypath 4mo ago
      [flagged]
      - vrganj 4mo ago
        It's a rephrasing of the "Cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory, which was at the core of Breivik's Manifesto. A conspiracy theory that originated as "Cultural Bolshevism", the justification the actual Nazis used to justify their mass murder.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

chollida1 4mo ago

> But then he made a tweet that basically just says "I suggested this, some people like it, some hate it". That's super against the rules, because it attracts people to the proposal who otherwise wouldn't have seen it. How would this in any way be against the rules? Wouldn'tan open and democratic process like wikipedia want as many eyes as possible on a vote or rule change? That sounds completely backwards from the open and free spirit of wikipedia. If even wikipedia has gone full mob rule then hwo do any projects stay open and free to everyone?

ameliaquining 4mo ago
Consensus-based decision making doesn't work if people can bring in their existing audience from elsewhere to overwhelm the discussion. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Canvassing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Canvassing.
WarmWash 4mo ago
While I agree, the internet has also long suffered from brigading (for better or worse) because the barrier-to-action is virtually zero.
stonogo 4mo ago
I would describe Wikipedia's process as democratic but not necessarily open. And it's pretty hypocritical to describe how they operate as 'mob rule' while complaining that rabble-rousing on other platforms should be allowed. Which is it? Should Sanger be allowed to raise a mob to win a policy vote, or should Wikipedia forbid external vote-whipping? I stopped engaging with Wikipedia because my experience of their administration is that it's deeply toxic. This specific instance doesn't seem too out-of-hand to me, since the rules are clear in this instance. It's where there are grey areas that their behavior starts to get unhinged.
john_strinlai 4mo ago
>How would this in any way be against the rules? Wouldn'tan open and democratic process like wikipedia want as many eyes as possible on a vote or rule change? if you bring in a bunch of non-wikipedia people (i.e. people who haven't previously cared about or participated in wikipedia discussions at all), all from 1 person's twitter following, you aren't getting "open and free spirit"-ed discussion. you are getting a bunch of larry followers who want larry to "win"

afh1 4mo ago

Yes, banned by the status quo for trying to disturb it. Wikipedia is nowadays highly politicized and more time and energy are spent on politics than on actually contributing with any useful knowledge. I've stopped contributing years ago after a decade of writing because of how bad things had gotten. It's a lost battle, all that remains is scorched earth filled with toxic editors trying to push their POV and banning everyone who exposes them or attempts to change things.

martinald 4mo ago
Yes agreed, for example, there was an interesting table on the starlink page I used to check every so often showing which countries had access to starlink as it was rolled out. Was interesting to see the expansion. Of course, some editor decided it was 'marketing' for starlink so it got deleted despite loads of people protesting. It was the only source I could find easily for showing which country got starlink when. A huge list of prose is still on the page (not marketing?) showing the updates in a very hard to read and not comprehensive way. Something is really quite wrong over there.
- ieie3366 4mo ago
  It’s a shame :( There’s a lot of blatantly incorrect information on wikipedia, and i’ve had multiple wikipedia edits reverted due to ’bad sources’
- ieie3366 4mo ago
  And the worst is the cycle: 1. There is incorrect information on wikipedia. 2. Legacy news publishes an article, using wikipedia as source (of course). 3. Now the incorrect information is essentially canonized
  - JdeBP 4mo ago
    On the other hand, some of the best is when a hoax written by a monk in the north of England some time around 1300 is debunked by late 20th century scholarship, and eventually someone makes Wikipedia no longer re-hash a propagandist revision of the Battle of Stirling Bridge re-set in Wales that stood unchallenged for almost 7 centuries. * https://youtube.com/v/mLdB5s7-h0w https://youtube.com/v/mLdB5s7-h0w * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Battle_of_Orewin_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...

wongarsu 4mo ago

An interesting procedural detail is how an admin decided to just close the discussion and ban the user before the mandatory discussion period was over, and got a lot of pushback for the sloppy decision making process. This was overturned, only for another admin to reach the same conclusion seven hours later, after the discussion was online for the mandatory 72 hours (with no consideration for the two hours between the wrongful decision and the reversal) https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents/Possible_off-wiki_canvassing_by_User:Larry_Sanger&oldid=1360671935#Update https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Adminis...

Aurornis 4mo ago
Having a labyrinth of rules to follow and then applying them asymmetrically is a classic way to build power for the ingroup and exile outsiders. The ingroup knows the rules well enough that they can wait until an enemy crosses one of the rules, then they have an excuse to punish them. The more rules on the books, the more opportunities to use them against your enemies. When someone inside breaks the rules, it’s treated as a misstep, handled internally, and then forgiven after a short ceremony to make it look like order and procedure are still being maintained.
- moralestapia 4mo ago
  This. At clubs. At school. At work. This is one of the first things I taught my kids to recognize and yet I see plenty of people in their 40s or more that still haven't figured it out. Some of them even become "useful fools" and make matters worse.
- greyface- 4mo ago
  Wikipedians refer to such ingroup members as The Unblockables. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unblockables https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unblockables
- sixothree 4mo ago
  You can build your own wikipedia.

pjc50 4mo ago

[flagged]

tpm 4mo ago
And once they get powerful enough, both diversity and intellect suffer.
throwawaypath 4mo ago
[flagged]
classified 4mo ago
> that hit a nerve Speaking the unvarnished truth often does.
- ben_w 4mo ago
  While this can be the case, in my experience nerves are always attached to self-image. This means one can hit a nerve not only by saying the emperor has no clothes, but also with actual defamation.
archagon 4mo ago
Much like “free speech.” Do people really not understand how propaganda works? Or do they just pretend not to in order to help enact these otherwise unpalatable policies?
- throwawaypath 4mo ago
  [flagged]

tialaramex 4mo ago

"Intellectual Diversity" seems to be another of these "Intelligent Design" rebrandings where rather than admit they were wrong the same crap just gets re-branded and goes straight back on the shelf.

FireBeyond 4mo ago

> This is unpopular because people oppose this on various grounds (mostly that it might be vote brigading and tiling decisions in their favor just by showing up in an organised way around wikipedia). Also the same project was apparently suggested before and rejected in early stages It's gone now, but this is hilariously on-brand - Wikipedia Review had its own axes to grind but did hugely in-depth work exposing Wikipedia Admins for "caballing", having secret mailing lists that Wikipedia denied the existence of, private IRC channels where admins had their pet topics that they owned and would "get suppressing fire" from other admins when they were going to make edits that reflected their POV (i.e. "watch while I edit and block/ban people who try to revert or interfere"). They'd do the same for admin elections etc.

Kim_Bruning 4mo ago

Well, sure, it looks like one thing, but ... I took a quick look at what the "Wikiproject intellectual diversity" was actually monitoring. Specific articles or categories about things Mr Sanger finds interesting,right? Well, indeed: specifically it's all arbcom, admin elections, policy pages. You can check it out here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Larry_Sanger/WikiProject_Intellectual_Diversity/PolicyScanner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Larry_Sanger/WikiProject_... Then he canvassed people from outside wikipedia to help with that project. So he claimed to be doing one thing, but in reality it was more of a thinly disguised power play by the look of it.

MichaelZuo 4mo ago
This doesnt make sense… ? Clearly all significant names involved with Wikipedia, including admins, have some kind of ulterior motives, to some degree above literally zero. Unless you believe in literally perfect altruism 100% of the time. The degree can vary from one to another, but that seems like a much higher bar to confidently pin down.
- ImPostingOnHN 4mo ago
  You aren't allowed to build a live feed of wikipedia administrative actions that run counter to your political biases, so that you can coordinate a brigade of people who share your political biases.
  - MichaelZuo 4mo ago
    Did you reply to the correct comment? This doesnt seem to address my comment?
    - ImPostingOnHN 4mo ago
      Can you clarify how your comment addressed the one it replied to? Yours was a bit non-sequitur, so perhaps I misinterpreted the implication.

watwut 4mo ago

> Intellectual Diversity Until I see a situation where this is used to add leftists or far left to a right wing organization, I will just assume it means quota for minimal number of underqualified right wing hacks.